India will play a three-day warm up game against Sri Lanka Board President's XI starting from 6 August in Colombo

Aug 5, 2015 16:59 IST

Team India reached Colombo on Monday for their tour of Sri Lanka. The sun was shining outside on Monday morning, but soon the cloud covers started to threaten the practice sessions. It started drizzling on Tuesday morning and as time went by, it had started raining heavily, forcing the Indian team to practice at the indoor nets of the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo.

Team India will be playing three Test matches against Sri Lanka starting from 12 August. But before that, the visitors will also be playing a three-day warm up game against Sri Lanka Board President's XI from 6 August at the Premadasa Stadium.

Team India is hopeful that they will be able to play a rain-free warm up game so that they can acclimatise with the conditions quickly, ahead of the 1st Test to be played at Galle.

"I don't know - the rain spoiled the previous training," India opening batsman Murali Vijay told reporters when asked how well he was timing the ball in the nets.

A lot will depend on the Indian openers in this series, as of late, they have been in good form. Shikhar Dhawan and Vijay slammed 150+ runs each in the last Test match they played against Bangladesh. Now they have one more batsman to compete with, KL Rahul.

The 23-year-old, who plays for Karnataka, has also been in fine form in the domestic circuit and is itching to get a call in the playing XI. If Vijay is fit to play, then it is likely that Dhawan and Vijay will begin the proceedings and Rahul will come out to bat in the middle order.

If skipper Virat Kohli opts for a five-bowler strategy, then Cheteshwar Pujara, who recently was leading India A and who is also desperate to get amongst runs, might feel the axe.

It is still early days to decide the playing XI though. India is hoping they get a full three-day game. At the moment, they have been training hard to practice indoors and can only pray that rain won't play spoilsport with their hopes of a good warm up game from Thursday.